HOANG XUAN HAN AND GIROLAMO MAIORICA’S NOM WORKS IN NATIONAL LIBRARY OF FRANCE IN PARIS

Abstract

Girolamo Maiorica was an Italian priest of Society of Jesus (Latin name: Societas  Iesu). He came to Viet Nam at the beginning of the seventeenth century, he lived and preached in Tonkin at the same time as Alexandre de
Rhodes did, from 1631 until his death in Thang Long. His legacy was a large number of works in various genres of Catholic literature written in Nom script, which for a long time had been considered lost, until Vietnamese scholar Hoang Xuan Han found some in the National Library of France in 1951. Hoang Xuan Han wrote
about his discovery in an article published in the Archivum Historicum Soietatis Iesu journal in 1953. Although this article was short, it was of great significance for the study of Catholic literature in Nom script of the seventeenth century. This paper aims to introduce Hoang Xuan Han’s article and some related information